I've uploaded a new version of WinArena to TES Source.

http://tessource.net/files/file.php?id=8516

For those who haven't seen it before, it's a utility for dumping Arena's resource files to more accessible file formats. Most of the formats have been figured out, with the noteable exception of the IMG format used for full-screen images. Now if only I could find an Arena-era dev who could give me a few hints how that format was encoded...

It also allows you to wonder around the starter dungeon and see what Arena would have looked like had it supported 640x400 or 960x600 resolutions, still using the same 8-bit graphics and pixel dithering scheme as Arena.

This is a great project, it looks like it would be definately possible to do a full recreation of Arena someday. Is the city randomly created, or is that just loading a file?

Arena's levels are built using sort of a tile-based method. Each dungeon level consists of 2 to 6 tiles (they're fairly large). Cities use even more tiles. Arena assembles the tiles to an intermediate format, then renders from that. I know how to render from the intermediate format, but I'm still working on how to assemble tiles to that format. Thankfully, Arena saves data in the intermediate format to disk while it's running, so I made copies of the starter dungeon and a town one of my chars was in (those are the two DAT files with WinArena). I just use the trick of randomizing which texture sets are used for the town so it looks different each time -- the buildings don't change, they're just textured differently.

Very cool B) Well done! :goodjob:

Nicely done.

I very much liked the larger size. Wouldn't have been good on the actual monitor I was using back in '94, but it's sweet on today's monitors.

Excellent work.

WinArena just rocks! I only wish Stanza will one day continue his work on it.